"A life lived lead to material for films and the questions that arise from them," aptly described by the film magazine Frame about the films of Sabine Gisiger. It had always been the existential questions of life, which the Zurich-based filmmaker wanted to explore in her documentaries. The 56-year old has been working in the film industry since 1990 and now shares her knowledge with film students as a lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts. One of her biggest successes is DO IT, the recipient of the Swiss Film Prize, in which she takes an uninhibited look at the history of Swiss terrorism. For GAMBIT, a documentary about the chemical disaster in Seveso, Italy in the 1970s, won the Critics Week Award in Locarno four years later and was garnered with the Max Ophüls Prize and the Swiss Film Prize. In her latest film DÜRRENMATT, a love story, Sabine Gisiger attempts to retrace Dürrenmatt's marriag to Lotti through archival material, a marriage that she herself has witnessed from up close as Friedrich Dürrenmatt was often a guest in Gisiger parents's home.

Vincent Maraval's filmography as a producer reads like an outline of the most important arthouse films of the 2000s. As co-founder of Wild Bunch, a distribution and world sales company committed to the promotion of arthouse cinema, his roles include producer, co-producer and executive producer on a number of international productions. The Frenchman supported the artistic vision of great directors like Gaspar Noé, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Abdellatif Kechiche, Nicolas Winding Refn, Claire Denis, Guillaume Canet, Vincenzo Natali, Cristian Mungiu, James Marsh, Stephen Frears, Abel Ferrara, Woody Allen , Darren Aronofsky, Steven Soderbergh, Fernando Meirelles, Peter Sollett and Larry Clark. Prior to joining Wild Bunch Maraval worked for TF1 and StudioCanal.

Gabriel Mascaro is one of the most innovative, daring and successful Brazilian directors and artists of recent years, and that at just 32 years. His filmography includes six feature films to date, including four documentaries and two feature films, as well as various video installations. In his films Mascaro explores the boundaries between fiction and documentary. His avant-garde hybrid films bring the physical and sensual aspects of their protagonists into the foreground and combine traditional forms of storytelling in cinema with elements of the visual arts. For this reason, his works can also be found time and again in contemporary art exhibitions and museums. His biggest film success to date is titled VENTOS DE AGOSTO, which IndieWire described as a "beautiful meditation on life and death". The first feature film from Mascaro was honored among others at the Brazilia Festival of Brazilian Cinema and the Film Festival Locarno. Gabriel Mascaro has already appeared with his documentary DOMESTICA in the section "New World View" at Zurich Film Festival in 2013. This year he presents his second feature film BOI NEON in Zurich.

The Catalonian producer and director Luis Miñarro is considered one of the foremost proponents of Spanish auteur cinema. Like no other he especially defends the visual aspect of cinema. "It's totally ok that many people consider cinema as mere entertainment. For me, however, it is primarily art," Miñarro remarked in an interview with a Spanish film magazine. He has produced over 30 films with his production company, Eddie Saeta, founded in 1989, including festival favorites such as FINISTERRAE and LA MOSQUITERA. He was honored at the Cannes Film Fesitval in 2010 with the Palme d'Or for the international co-production UNCLE BOONMEE WHO. Four years later, he completed his first feature film as a director with Stella Cadente. The film was received with two Gaudi Awards. The latest news was not a film announcement rather the headlines were about the closure of his production company. Despite its impressive filmography and international recognition, the producer had difficulties convincing both critics and backers, especially in his homebase, of his radically unconventional projects. But Miñarro has plans of retiring from filmmaking. His second directorial effort SALOME will shake up international film festivals in 2016.

Dick Pope's passion and enthusiasm begins when reading scripts in which images blossom. Having studied painting and photography his whole life, the 68-year old Brite has been an avid photographer himself since childhood. In THE REFLECTING SKIN, one of his early films, the disturbing images that draw their inspiration from Andrew Wyeth is directly reflected. In Mike Leigh's MR. TURNER last year, he created another visual tribute to a great painter with his cinematography: Meticulous studies of lighting moods at all times of the day and whatever the weather allowed for exterior shots, the light and color applied to the canvas without CGI effects "Turneresque" - breathtaking work for which he was recognized with an award in Cannes among others. Pope's collaboration with Mike Leigh goes back many years. Since LIFE IS SWEET, it has been Dick Pope's lifelike settings, landscapes of the human face, and authenticity that make Mike Leigh's films cinematographically so unique.

Ruth Toma was born in 1956 in Lower Bavaria. After state exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich she started off as an actress and author in the independent theater group "Temporary Structures" and was active for nine years. Then she attended top postgraduate courses in film at the University of Hamburg where she graduated with honors. Many of her screenplays developed into successful film, including A SONG OF LOVE AND DEATH - GLOOMY SUNDAY, SOLINO, PEAS AT FIVE-THIRTY, EMMAS GLÜCK, SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT, 3096 Days, THE CHEF and television films ROMEO and THE LOST BROTHER. Ruth Toma is one of the most important German writers. Her scripts have won many awards, among them the German Screenplay Award, the Writer's Award of the Cologne Conference, the German Television Award, the Bavarian Film Award and the Adolf Grimme Prize.